The Mortgaged Heart (24 page)

P.S.
I cannot waste any more of my valuable time writing to you.

[
The New Yorker,
February 7, 1942]

H
E WAS A LARGE MAN
, a contractor, and he was the husband of the small, sharp Mrs. Mahoney who was so active in club and cultural affairs. A canny businessman (he owned a brick yard and planing mill ), Mr. Mahoney lumbered with tractable amiability in the lead of the artistic Mrs. Mahoney. Mr. Mahoney was well drilled; he was accustomed to speak of "repertory," to listen to lectures and concerts with the proper expression of meek sorrow. He could talk about abstract art, he had even taken part in two of the Little Theatre productions, once as a butler, the other time as a Roman soldier. Mr. Mahoney, diligently trained, so many times admonished—how could he have brought upon them such disgrace?

The pianist that night was José Iturbi, and it was the first concert of the season, a gala night. The Mahoneys had worked very hard during the Three Arts League drive. Mr. Mahoney had sold more than thirty season tickets on his own. To business acquaintances, the men downtown, he spoke of the projected concerts as "a pride to the community" and "a cultural necessity." The Mahoneys had donated the use of their car and had entertained subscribers at a lawn fete—with three white-coated colored boys handing refreshments, and their newly built Tudor house waxed and flowered for the occasion. The Mahoneys' position as sponsors of art and culture was well earned.

The start of the fatal evening gave no hint of what was to come. Mr. Mahoney sang in the shower and dressed himself with detailed care. He had brought an orchid from Duff's Flower Shop. When Ellie came in from her room—they had adjoining separate rooms in the new house—he was brushed and gleaming in his dinner jacket, and Ellie wore the orchid on the shoulder of her blue crepe dress. She was pleased and, patting his arm, she said: "You look so handsome tonight, Terence. Downright distinguished."

Mr. Mahoney's stout body bridled with happiness, and his ruddy face with the forked-veined temples blushed. "You are always beautiful, Ellie. Always so beautiful. Sometimes I don't understand why you married a—"

She stopped him with a kiss.

There was to be a reception after the concert at the Harlows', and of course the Mahoneys were invited. Mrs. Harlow was the "bell cow" in this pasture of the finer things. Oh, how Ellie did despise such country-raised expressions! But Mr. Mahoney had forgotten all the times he had been called down as he gallantly placed Ellie's wrap about her shoulders.

The irony was that, up until the moment of his ignominy, Mr. Mahoney had enjoyed the concert more than any concert that he had ever heard. There was none of that wriggling, tedious Bach. There was some marchy-sounding music and often he was on foot-patting familiarity with the tunes. As he sat there, enjoying the music, he glanced occasionally at Ellie. Her face bore the expression of fixed, inconsolable grief that it always assumed when she listened to classical concert music. Between the numbers she put her hand to her forehead with a distracted air, as though the endurance of such emotion had been too much for her. Mr. Mahoney clapped his pink, plump hands with gusto, glad of a chance to move and respond.

In the intermission the Mahoneys filed sedately down the aisle to the lobby. Mr. Mahoney found himself stuck with old Mrs. Walker.

"I'm looking forward to the Chopin," she said. "I always love minor music, don't you?"

"I guess you enjoy your misery," Mr. Mahoney answered.

Miss Walker, the English teacher, spoke up promptly. "It's Mother's melancholy Celtic soul. She's of Irish descent, you know."

Feeling he had somehow made a mistake, Mr. Mahoney said awkwardly, "I like minor music all right."

Tip Mayberry took Mr. Mahoney's arm and spoke to him chummily. "This fellow can certainly rattle the old ivories."

Mr. Mahoney answered with reserve, "He has a very brilliant technique."

"It's still an hour to go," Tip Mayberry complained. "I wish me and you could slip out of here."

Mr. Mahoney moved discreetly away.

Mr. Mahoney loved the atmosphere of Little Theatre plays and concerts—the chiffon and corsages and decorous dinner jackets. He was warm with pride and pleasure as he went sociably about the lobby of the high school auditorium, greeting the ladies, speaking with reverent authority of movements and mazurkas.

It was during the first number after the intermission that the calamity came. It was a long Chopin sonata: the first movement thundering, the second jerking and mercurial. The third movement he followed knowingly with tapping foot—the rigid funeral march with a sad waltzy bit in the middle; the end of the funeral march came with a chorded final crash. The pianist lifted up his hand and even leaned back a little on the piano stool.

Mr. Mahoney clapped. He was so dead sure it was the end that he clapped heartily half a dozen times before he realized, to his horror, that he clapped alone. With swift fiendish energy José Iturbi attacked the piano keys again.

Mr. Mahoney sat stiff with agony. The next moments were the most dreadful in his memory. The red veins in his temples swelled and darkened. He clasped his offending hands between his thighs.

If only Ellie had made some comforting secret sign. But when he dared to glance at Ellie, her face was frozen and she gazed at the stage with desperate attentiveness. After some endless minutes of humiliation, Mr. Mahoney reached his hand timidly toward Ellie's crepe-covered thigh. Mrs. Mahoney moved away from him and crossed her legs.

For almost an hour Mr. Mahoney had to suffer this public shame. Once he caught a glimpse of Tip Mayberry, and an alien evil shafted through his gentle heart. Tip did not know a sonata from the
Slit Belly
Blues.
Yet there he sat, smug, unnoticed. Mrs. Mahoney refused to meet her husband's anguished eyes.

They had to go on to the party. He admitted it was the only proper thing to do. They drove there in silence, but when he had parked the car before the Harlow house Mrs. Mahoney said, "I should think that anybody with a grain of sense knows enough not to clap until everybody else is clapping."

It was for him a miserable party. The guests gathered around Jos6 Iturbi and were introduced. (They all knew who had clapped except Mr. Iturbi; he was as cordial to Mr. Mahoney as to the others.) Mr. Mahoney stood in the corner behind the concert-grand piano drinking Scotch. Old Mrs. Walker and Miss Walker hovered with the "bell cow" around Mr. Iturbi. Ellie was looking at the titles in the bookcase. She took out a book and even read for a little while with her back to the room. In the corner he was alone through a good many highballs. And it was Tip Mayberry who finally joined him. "I guess after all those tickets you sold you were entitled to an extra clap." He gave Mr. Mahoney a slow wink of covert brotherhood which Mr. Mahoney at that moment was almost willing to admit.

[
Mademoiselle,
February 1949]

H
UGH LOOKED
for his mother at the corner, but she was not in the yard. Sometimes she would be out fooling with the border of spring flowers—the candytuft, the sweet William, the lobelias (she had taught him the names)—but today the green front lawn with the borders of many-colored flowers was empty under the frail sunshine of the mid-April afternoon. Hugh raced up the sidewalk, and John followed him. They finished the front steps with two bounds, and the door slammed after them.

"Mamma!" Hugh called.

It was then, in the unanswering silence as they stood in the empty, wax-floored hall, that Hugh felt there was something wrong. There was no fire in the grate of the sitting room, and since he was used to the flicker of firelight during the cold months, the room on this first warm day seemed strangely naked and cheerless. Hugh shivered. He was glad John was there. The sun shone on a red piece in the flowered rug. Red-bright, red-dark, red-dead—Hugh sickened with a sudden chill remembrance of "the other time." The red datkened to a dizzy black.

"What's the matter, Brown?" John asked. "You look so white."

Hugh shook himself and put his hand to his forehead. "Nothing. Let's go back to the kitchen."

"I can't stay but just a minute," John said. "I'm obligated to sell those tickets. I have to eat and run."

The kitchen, with the fresh checked towels and clean pans, was now the best room in the house. And on the enameled table there was a lemon pie that she had made. Assured by the everyday kitchen and the pie, Hugh stepped back into the hall and raised his face again to call upstairs.

"Mother! Oh, Mamma!"

Again there was no answer.

"My mother made this pie," he said. Quickly he found a knife and cut into the pie—to dispel the gathering sense of dread.

"Think you ought to cut it, Brown?"

"Sure thing, Laney."

They called each other by their last names this spring, unless they happened to forget. To Hugh it seemed sporty and grown and somehow grand. Hugh liked John better than any other boy at school. John was two years older than Hugh, and compared to him the other boys seemed like a silly crowd of punks. John was the best student in the sophomore class, brainy but not the least bit a teacher's pet, and he was the best athlete too. Hugh was a freshman and didn't have so many friends that first year of high school—he had somehow cut himself off, because he was so afraid.

"Mamma always has me something nice for after school." Hugh put a big piece of pie on a saucer for John—for Laney.

"This pie is certainly super."

"The crust is made of crunched-up graham crackers instead of regular pie dough," Hugh said, "because pie dough is a lot of trouble. We think this graham-cracker pastry is just as good. Naturally, my mother can make regular pie dough if she wants to."

Hugh could not keep still; he walked up and down the kitchen, eating the pie wedge he carried on the palm of his hand. His brown hair was mussed with nervous rakings, and his gentle gold-brown eyes were haunted with pained perplexity. John, who remained seated at the table, sensed Hugh's uneasiness and wrapped one gangling leg around the other.

"I'm really obligated to sell those Glee Club tickets."

"Don't go. You have the whole afternoon." He was afraid of the empty house. He needed John, he needed someone; most of all he needed to hear his mother's voice and know she was in the house with him. "Maybe Mamma is taking a bath," he said. "I'll holler again."

The answer to his third call too was silence.

"I guess your mother must have gone to the movie or gone shopping or something."

"No," Hugh said. "She would have left a note. She always does when she's gone when I come home from school."

"We haven't looked for a note," John said. "Maybe she left it under the door mat or somewhere in the living room."

Hugh was inconsolable. "No. She would have left it right under this pie. She knows I always run first to the kitchen."

"Maybe she had a phone call or thought of something she suddenly wanted to do."

"She
might
have," he said. "I remember she said to Daddy that one of these days she was going to buy herself some new clothes." This flash of hope did not survive its expression. He pushed his hair back and started from the room. "I guess I'd better go upstairs. I ought to go upstairs while you are here."

He stood with his arm around the newel post; the smell of varnished stairs, the sight of the closed white bathroom door at the top revived again "the other time." He clung to the newel post, and his feet would not move to climb the stairs. The red turned again to whirling, sick dark. Hugh sat down.
Stick your head between your legs,
he ordered, remembering Scout first aid.

"Hugh," John called. "Hugh!"

The dizziness clearing, Hugh accepted a fresh chagrin—Laney was calling him by his ordinary first name; he thought he was a sissy about his mother, unworthy of being called by his last name in the grand, sporty way they used before. The dizziness cleared when he returned to the kitchen.

"Brown," said John, and the chagrin disappeared. "Does this establishment have anything pertaining to a cow? A white, fluid liquid. In French they call it
lait.
Here we call it plain old milk."

The stupidity of shock lightened. "Oh. Laney, I am a dope! Please excuse me. I clean forgot." Hugh fetched the milk from the refrigerator and found two glasses. "I didn't think. My mind was on something else."

"I know," John said. After a moment he asked in a calm voice, looking steadily at Hugh's eyes: "Why are you so worried about your mother? Is she sick, Hugh?"

Hugh knew now that the first name was not a slight; it was because John was talking too serious to be sporty. He liked John better than any friend he had ever had. He felt more natural sitting across the kitchen table from John, somehow safer. As he looked into John's gray, peaceful eyes, the balm of affection soothed the dread.

John asked again, still steadily: "Hugh, is your mother sick?"

Hugh could have answered no other boy. He had talked with no one about his mother, except his father, and even those intimacies had been rare, oblique. They could approach the subject only when they were occupied with something else, doing carpentry work or the two times they hunted in the woods together—or when they were cooking supper or washing dishes.

"She's not exactly sick," he said, "but Daddy and I have been worried about her. At least, we used to be worried for a while."

John asked: "Is it a kind of heart trouble?"

Hugh's voice was strained. "Did you hear about that fight I had with that slob Clem Roberts? I scraped his slob face on the gravel walk and nearly killed him sure enough. He's still got scars or at least he did have a bandage on for two days. I had to stay in school every afternoon for a week. But I nearly killed him. I would have if Mr. Paxton hadn't come along and dragged me off."

"I heard about it."

"You know why I wanted to kill him?"

For a moment John's eyes flickered away.